Tracking online properties has been the bane of marketeers since the inception of the World Wide Web, until Nielsen recently launched a new system of measuring online properties – the Online Campaign Ratings (OCR) in the US.
The OCR, the online equivalent of Nielsen’s TV Gross Rating Points (GRP) system, hopes to improve upon the research fi rm’s previous online measurement by providing the truest value of advertising on a website or web space.
The previous measurement was chastised by industry observers. Problems such as undercounting the traffi c on the internet and underestimating time spent online by approximately 22 per cent, plagued the system since its launch last year.
The new method integrates traditional Nielsen TV and online panel data (from its pool of 35,000 homes) with aggregated, anonymous demographic information from social networking site Facebook, after an exclusive partnership was signed between the two companies.
Essentially, when users view advertisements while logged onto Facebook or within the same browser, a notifi cation is sent to Facebook, which then searches its own user database to identify the user. Facebook will then store that person’s demographic data without revealing personal details and send the information to Nielsen for data compilation.
In doing so, the system is able to provide overnight audience reach, frequency and GRPs for internet display and video advertising campaigns of nearly any size, running nearly anywhere across the web.
According to Nielsen, the new system is able to track 42 per cent of impressions of a given advertisement, compared to the traditional online panel sample, which recorded only 3 per cent of such impressions.
“Advertisers and media companies alike are looking to prove the value of online media and advertising, but have lacked a reliable, standard measurement to demonstrate audience delivery against marketing goals,” said Steve Hasker, President, Media Product and Advertiser Solutions, Nielsen.
Some industry observers like Colleen Taylor at Web2.0 blog GigaOm.com, share this optimism about what this new indicator could do for internet advertising. Taylor goes as far as to state that previously, “the money spent on online advertising was not even close to the stratospheric spending levels poured into TV ads. But fi nally, the internet could become a fi rst-class citizen in the advertising world – for good”.
But others remain sceptical of this online value determination method. Leland Hicks, COO of marketing agency MatterMax Media, commented on an internet discussion forum that one big issue with the new system is “the fl awed rationalization behind Nielsen’s 35,000 panels being able to represent the viewing habits of over 200 million TV viewers”. Instead, Hicks feels that a better indicator of online advertising values is sales.
Despite this, things are still looking bright for the system. Since its launch in August, several industry leaders, including Procter & Gamble and Disney/ABC Television Group, have employed the OCR as their measurement of choice.
